Fridayz Live ’23 is a massive party night of non-stop music, astonishing live performances backed by eye-popping visuals, pyrotechnics and flames. A genuine psychedelic festival to celebrate fifty years of Hip-Hop and Rap.With Jason Derulo, Boyz II Men, Kelly Rowland, Flo Rida, 112, Havana Brown, Travie McCoy, Jojo, Naughty by Nature
People all over the world/ Join hands/ Start a love train/ Let it Ride. 1972 and classic Philly Soul Love Train from The O’Jays and the pens of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff.
Hip-Hop was created in New York City and the Bronx in 1973 and incorporated a whole Black American culture of MC rapping, DJs’ spinning and scratching on the turntables, breakdancing and graffiti art. Surfing in alongside intergalactic waves of nascent Disco and Punk. Presided over by the Godfather himself, James Brown.
In a way, the show tonight is an incendiary explosion of the legendary shows of Brother Brown. He responded to his spiritual children in 1981 to remind us.
All you perpetrators/ Bitin’ me so hard/ Steal my rhythm and my style/ and you think you’re God. I’m Real from James Brown with Full Force.
Jason Derulo takes the headliner’s spot with an hour of intensity and passion. Timed and rehearsed down to split seconds and all the more thrilling for that.
Starts with Whatcha Say, one of his biggest neo-Soul hits.
The dancing hot guys match that with breakdancing which I have not seen for a while. Takes me back to the days of the Breakdance movies of the mid Eighties. Boomers like me remember Shabba Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp, who we watched repeatedly on VHS rentals.
Earlier in the day, the entourage was met by a powhiri which touched the hearts of many of the performers.
A small group of Māori dancers invade the stage and do a little haka party to give a benediction for audience and artists alike.
Derulo sings with a classic Soul voice of the style of latter-day Motown male leads, in the twilight days of the ground-breaking Black music label. Like DeBarge or the Jackson Five.
There is so much going on that it takes some time to notice the guitarist wailing out some Ernie Isley riffs.
One song revolves around the Banana Boat (Day O) song from Harry Belafonte.
Talk Dirty closes his set and the evening. I got lipstick stains on my passport. There is an abbreviated version of James Brown’s cape routine to finish, as the foxy ladies huddle around him.
Fatman Scoop was the MC for the evening and is ideal to front a show of this magnitude. Many of the male performers, dancers and singers alike, strip to the waist briefly to show off sculpted abs and hot bodies. All the ladies in the house go oooh! Fatman shows off an impressive one-keg.
Boyz II Men are one of the most successful Black vocal groups in history.
They arrive on stage dressed in white-on-white, like the Temptations on the cover of their Temptin’ Temptations album of 1965. Boyz II Men started on the Motown label.
They’re not Rappers or Hip-Hop. They are Gospel Soul, and they can testify like JB (there he is again) and Little Richard.
I’ll Make Love to You is a stand-out. There are a few slow-burners, and the band are a good contrast in energy to the other acts.
Kelly Rowland is from Nineties Girl Group Destiny’s Child of course, a formidable and mega-selling trio with Beyonce Knowles and Michelle Williams.
Especially with the troupe of eight dancers, with maybe a male or two in there.
She makes the most of her half hour, compressing many of the Destiny’s Child hits into it. Of which there many.
You get the idea. The large Spark Arena audience were doing the hip shake all night long.
112 is where I came in, as DJ Stormy introduced Mike and Slim. They would be hip-hop with the emphasis on Soul.
They get more soulful following that.
The highlight is I’ll Be Missing You, which does borrow some of the sound of the Police hit, Every Breath You Take. Sting is probably cool with that, as his band name alludes to pork and bacon fat.
Flo Rida came on and he made it clear that this was not a concert, it was a Paaarrrty!
Chanting, declamatory rapping. Curvy Dream Babies dancing and shaking their money-makers.
Champagne (or fizzy carbonated water) is sprayed off the stage. Flo Rida takes ride on a security guys shoulders around the ground floor auditorium.
Whistle gets the stands bouncing close to a harmonic frequency. That’s how the vibrations feel coming through your backbone.
The music seems to be compressing and meshing much of the time. You can hear snatches of Psychedelic Garage Rock.
The music is beat heavy and stripped back. Electronica and space age effects.
I did not catch Jo Jo and Travie McCoy. Something to do with Auckland motorways and getting stuck in traffic for two and a half hours. I would not recommend catching that concert.
DJs’ Naughty by Nature were highly entertaining, with two sets counting down the Top Twenty-Five Songs of Rap and Hip-Hop. Flying on a high wire without the aid of a safety net. Some were missing, as will always be the case.
Fridayz Live was a huge show. Seamless music throughout. It was Rap and Hip-Hop overload with plenty of Soul and R’n’B. Heading for the overload. Thank you, Rolling Stones, and Rocks Off. Because we love getting off on More is More!
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Travie McCoy
JOJO
112
Kelly Rowland
Boyz II Men
Flo Rida
Havana Brown
Jason Derulo
